Such measurement systems for an industrial process measurement- and/or process control-installation are, for example, those which are placed at or in a container or pipe and with which process variables or process parameters, such as e.g. pressure, difference pressure, fill level, limit level and/or density of a medium in the container or pipe are registered or determined. The way and manner, in which these process variables or process parameters are registered or determined, is known per se.
In this connection, particularly radiometric measurement systems for measuring a characterizing parameter, such as e.g. fill level, limit level and/or density of a medium, include essentially at least one radioactive source of radiation and at least one detector, which is usually associated with a transmitter, which in turn transmits the signals corresponding to the measurement parameters to a control room or measurement station.
According to a usual method for determining an optimized arrangement of a radiometric measurement system at a container or pipe, a customer, or a representative of a customer, that desires to buy and install such an installation, transmits the requisite container, pipe and/or medium data for determining the arrangement of the radiometric measurement system, mostly by telephone facsimile, to a manufacturer of such radiometric measurement systems. At the manufacturer, an appropriately schooled team member uses the data transmitted from the customer and the characterizing data of the components offered by the manufacturer to calculate at least one arrangement for a measurement system and sends the customer a corresponding proposal for the design of the measurement system.
The disadvantage of the usual method resides in its being time consuming and its requiring in many cases further correspondence.
Another method for determining an optimized arrangement of a radiometric measurement system at a container or pipe is one where a manufacturer makes a suitable software available to an interested customer. This software can be installed at the customer's location on a computer, so that the customer can itself calculate the desired arrangement of the radiometric system.
It has become apparent that, in this method and especially in the operation of the software at the customer's location, exact knowledge of the different measurement procedures, for example that of fill level measurement and particularly the radiometry and the physical fundamentals associated therewith, as regards radiation protection-relevant regulations, etc., is assumed to be present, but in many cases is not. Since the design of the system is done by the customer itself, the manufacturer of such measurement systems is usually not responsible for damages, which are caused by incorrect measurement system design done by the customer itself.